For me, the leap to autism was a gigantic leap upwards in status, because I came from mentally, physically and psychologically inferior. Not so much the medical classification but the approval to approach others. incredibly more status-rich and smarter autistic people, like you, and forums to write about it and be published, gave me a status boost. I do not see myself as 'born with autism', but as 'born with a neurological and metabolic functioning' that is now called, among other things, autistic, but will be given a different name and value within a certain time. I understand the status anxiety of many late-diagnosed autistic people, because it may feel as quite a distance. It’s the kind of fall I’ve experienced a few months ago when I went to live in a social community of very poor, chronically ill and people addicted to doing absolutely nothing.
First of all, sorry my reaction is so awfully late. Secondly, sorry to hear your context is not improving.
It is good that you point out that an autism diagnosis can be an improvement. I think that has been true - in another way - for me as well just because there really is something like an autistic community (in our case that also means that there are readers and so on). I'm not smarter, though, just more status-rich - and we live in a society where status often is taken as a proxy for intelligence which it most clearly is not.
However, I do not think you have been born with autism. I think you have been born with a body that in your case was more visibly disabled and that - together with a predisposition for precision - often attracted negative scrutiny from the outside world. You developed, in response to this, an autistic knot. The name is of course contingent, but the fact is that in your development you attracted negative appreciations (more so probably because of the more visible divergence of your body).
That naming this knot as autism gave you a status boost is only because autistics created a counter narrative for this specific negative scrutiny (and one of those autistics that have contributed to this obviously is: yourself ;). But no, you have not been born with autism as the world has to be a certain way - the way it happened to be when you grew up - in order for you to develop this knot (as you say yourself, I think).
Anyway, that's just my view as a late diagnosed autistic who, in fact, never felt anxious at all at being diagnosed (maybe because I had already so much status that I could not even entertain the very idea of a fall).
For me, the leap to autism was a gigantic leap upwards in status, because I came from mentally, physically and psychologically inferior. Not so much the medical classification but the approval to approach others. incredibly more status-rich and smarter autistic people, like you, and forums to write about it and be published, gave me a status boost. I do not see myself as 'born with autism', but as 'born with a neurological and metabolic functioning' that is now called, among other things, autistic, but will be given a different name and value within a certain time. I understand the status anxiety of many late-diagnosed autistic people, because it may feel as quite a distance. It’s the kind of fall I’ve experienced a few months ago when I went to live in a social community of very poor, chronically ill and people addicted to doing absolutely nothing.
First of all, sorry my reaction is so awfully late. Secondly, sorry to hear your context is not improving.
It is good that you point out that an autism diagnosis can be an improvement. I think that has been true - in another way - for me as well just because there really is something like an autistic community (in our case that also means that there are readers and so on). I'm not smarter, though, just more status-rich - and we live in a society where status often is taken as a proxy for intelligence which it most clearly is not.
However, I do not think you have been born with autism. I think you have been born with a body that in your case was more visibly disabled and that - together with a predisposition for precision - often attracted negative scrutiny from the outside world. You developed, in response to this, an autistic knot. The name is of course contingent, but the fact is that in your development you attracted negative appreciations (more so probably because of the more visible divergence of your body).
That naming this knot as autism gave you a status boost is only because autistics created a counter narrative for this specific negative scrutiny (and one of those autistics that have contributed to this obviously is: yourself ;). But no, you have not been born with autism as the world has to be a certain way - the way it happened to be when you grew up - in order for you to develop this knot (as you say yourself, I think).
Anyway, that's just my view as a late diagnosed autistic who, in fact, never felt anxious at all at being diagnosed (maybe because I had already so much status that I could not even entertain the very idea of a fall).